


Smile in the Fire

by freelance_writes11



Category: K-pop, Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Deception, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Human/Monster Romance, My First Work in This Fandom, Possession
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:14:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25139056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freelance_writes11/pseuds/freelance_writes11
Summary: One touch and it was over. It was just that way with Seulgi. She felt electricity in her skin, enough for Irene’s resistance to crumble but conscious enough to know a heavier touch could break the heady magic.She was nothing more than a visionary within a dream. She didn’t care what she thought of her as long as she obeyed.
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Kang Seulgi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A written-on-a-whim story based around the lyrics and visuals of Irene and Seulgi’s MV, “Monster”.

The ledge was as wide as a single foot and with all the grip of black ice. A dried patch of brown that had wicked into the hem of her dress was somehow stark red in the daylight. She wished it would stop. She needed it to stop. Perhaps this time would be the last. Exhaustion burnt her out so badly there was nothing left but a shell, an outline of a person. The laughing wind crept up to her, following her up the mountains, hissing at the warmth of her body.

It still wanted her.

She was calmed by the black smoke devouring her, pouring out of her. She was calmed by the cliffs, by their pretty vines and crevices. She was muted by the chasm, tantalizingly dangling air above her head as she began to fall and fall and keep falling still.

_“Seulgi.”_

Morbid curiosity made her eyes flutter open. Red wine dripped from her fingertips and her chest beat compassionately at the cold suspicious stares, only grayer and blurred with softer edges.

She glanced down at the meat, fish, potatoes and French beans constituting a ‘light’, summertime dinner, unsure of what Black Game might have been, but she was fairly certain she would have no appetite for the miscellany of food. Apparently, the English (and now her country) took this sort of thing in stride; they put out ostentatious samples from New York to Vienna on a humid lazy night; the air swelled with operettas, cigars and pianists; and men occasionally retired to loosen their waistcoats after a meal.

Seulgi had no such option because ladies weren’t supposed to eat much. With pauses between meals for conversation, drinking and the like, she would have taken hours to finish. She kept her eyes narrowed in expired fascination, as if they weren’t entirely committed to the idea of smiling. Head high, she swept out of the drawing room. A second later, head even higher, she swept back in, snatched up her drink and was gone again for the balconies.

The countryside was glorious in its inception, positioned over the marshes with a view of the river drunkenly meandering its way to the edge of the horizon. The air was sweet, the weather was fine, there were nightingales in the sky and she could hear water not far away.

“You couldn’t tell there’d been a war.”

Moonlight spilled onto her chest and shoulders, and without so much as a backwards glance Seulgi smiled stiffly at her company for speaking her thoughts aloud.

“What happened? Why aren’t you inside?” Irene continued, taking her hand.

Seulgi closed her eyes. No matter how salubrious the furnishings were, the Diamond Manor would never be more than a standing colossal exhibition.

“I should be on my way, I know, but today I just wanted to smell the flowers.” She shrugged a practiced indecisiveness. “Take my chances on spotting a deer.”

“You don’t truly hate the home, but you are deathly afraid of your bedroom.” Irene’s hand rested below her ear, slow and soft in ways letters could never be. “Afraid of the privacy being stripped away. Of all the sinful secrets beneath the innocent, white satin sheets.”

Calmer than the seals in the Arctic Ocean, Irene’s beautiful brow crease and her full lip down-curve was just the right blend of relaxation and tension. Seulgi’s arms squeezed a fraction tighter around her hips and she breathed slower.

And suddenly, she began to laugh. “I don’t often get the chance to talk to someone like you,” she murmured.

“That’s because I’m not supposed to be here.”

The contact of Irene’s brave lips drove a magnetic flow of confidence into Seulgi. Well, she must have expected the effect of her performance to be magnetic. Seulgi’s expression was motionless as marble.

She began to cackle noisily now, a mingling of honk and twinkling, enticing not excitement so much as curiosity. “What a fanciful vision this turned into,” she murmured once more.

Irene hovered a foot off the grass, hands spilling from the silvers of her evening gown that were going to push Seulgi away instead brushing along her breasts − just warm and trapped in close, slowly blooming pink without shame or false modesty, beating through her fingers. A puff of wind swept over Irene’s torso as Seulgi tore up her hem. Her legs were streaked with blue veins that sat comfortably on her moon-bleached skin, hundreds of beauty spots that speckled them jumping at her when she tensed.

The one covered in little angry red scars was her favorite.

“You know,” the younger of the two began, moving up on her heels until there was barely a distance of an inch, “your heart’s intentions show you where you’re going, and the physical scars show you where you’ve been.”

Irene’s head angled slightly to the side, her hair tumbling down her exposed back in thick locks and her voice a lilting Korean accent:

“Where will you take me tonight?”

Seulgi, in one fluid motion, turned so that she was astride the warm auburn, ball gown riding up her thighs ever so slightly. Their gaze lasted a full second, enough for each to take in the face of the other. She could nearly feel the burn of wine as it rolled off her tongue and into Irene’s mouth, growing worse with every push of her tongue. Irene’s hands clasped gently into the back of her hair, pressing in softly and lightly pulling Seulgi forward, adding more pressure to their lips.

Seulgi exhaled through her nose, not wanting to let go. Like an inexorable madness, it was rushing to every corner of her body; the cracks in between her toes, the crooks of her elbows, the tips of her ears. The strong illumination that cast her face into relief, eccentric hysteria, and raw energy was barely romantic moonlight, but it stayed on her strong as candlelight would.

On the first soft moan, Seulgi could hardly swallow. She scaldingly hushed Irene just as the first bite of cold wind crept under her gathered skirt, completely on top of her to give herself more support to push forward. She had to laugh at the older woman’s whore-like tendencies to forgo proper corset and undergarments, simply too eager to exaggerate the top and expose herself to any Sunday walker.

Irene gazed at her in silent want, whimpering this time. Tears fell in a similar quietness that Seulgi generously kissed clean before squeezing her lips atop hers again, laughing again underneath the pungent salt. The graze of nails, disastrously and disobediently beautiful, crossed Seulgi’s throat. Irene’s moans in the contact of heat and wet were similar to the lips that sang sweet carols at Christmastime.

Seulgi’s head would spin now if instead it hadn’t made her sick to the very pit of her stomach.

One touch and it was over. It was just that way with Seulgi. She felt electricity in her skin, enough for Irene’s resistance to crumble but conscious enough to know a heavier touch could break the heady magic. Irene’s beauty leaked through her fingers and over freshly cold nails, escaping as if it never knew it was welcome to stay.

From then on it was all power, intense, intoxicating − as if her privacy had bled out right there on the ground, everything she hoped it would be, all the brilliance it would have brought. It was Seulgi’s escape, her dream come true. Crumbling dresses, burnt optimism and curiosity, and freedom threaded under bright lights.

The music was slowing, the song was almost over, but Seulgi and Irene couldn’t stop dancing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully I will/I have created something worthwhile for my first work in the Red Velvet fandom. I was hooked seeing Irene and Seulgi’s sub-unit debut, and I know the MV didn’t really have a cinematic story woven in, but that’s what the imagination is for.
> 
> There were a few flashes of some kind of Victorian-era visuals coupled with skin ship, so, I thought, “maybe work off of that” and see how it goes. Feedback is greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Although they were clean, barely enough light made it through to illuminate the scissors and gave them a dirty, practically derisive-like feel gliding along the nude parchment paper. The trim waved with undulating creases, yet in truth they were very solid and valid, giving structure and form to something unique.

Minutes passed and the movement rose and relaxed, intense and delicate, telling of a day that passed in the world beyond her control. Seulgi watched the thickset squares transform into faded rectangles as though they were stretching and screaming before quieting down and finally surrendering to the blades. There was a ripping, popping sound as the ‘ligaments’ tore, and the pulpy breaking as the ‘bone’ burst from the sweet spot of the paper’s cheek.

Then she got a glint of red.

Seulgi sent her gaze elsewhere to mute the rising screams. Every muscle felt tight, sprung for action, but she refused to look at what she had done. She was okay. In her bedroom she was finally able to live in comfortable modesty, free to think, to write whatever she pleased. She let her eyes roam over her chest, heartbeat strong yet aimless, and down to the palest tone of her arms. She cleanly fingered the gentle, understated way she smiled, and the sensory overload soon became nothing more than a spot of muck beneath her shoes.

She was okay. It was just a little slip.

Seulgi returned to her crafts, allowing a giggle to rumble cutely in her throat when she could recall sitting in her father’s lap some twelve or so years ago, alongside the old fireplace they once had. His hoarse, heroic-like voice propelled her to follow his stories lit by new beginnings and worlds she had never seen before. Love. Happiness. Innocence.

Seulgi thought about that every now and then, the blameless consequences to be unrestricted, untamed − like a virgin child again. She, who could write a mile long passage from the classics and never forget a face, longed for…for…

_“For the time our lips locked together. The world itself ceased to exist, blurred and indistinct as a painting left out in the torrents that fell from the dark clouds above us.”_

Nostalgia wasn’t so good as it once was, but that beautiful trap was still for the heart. The letter had so many crease lines, all of them fluffy to the outside from so many times being folded and unfolded. Likewise, the paper was soft to the touch and the ink had run but only slightly. Seulgi’s eyes caressed the strokes the quill made so many months ago, seeing the personality behind the strong lines and heavy punctuation marks.

Between her pacifying breaths, before she even realized it, Seulgi had come to look at that sinful rendezvous she hadn’t thought of in so long − envisioning the sequel to the tryst she had explained in those letters. The daylight conjured the most brilliant of mosaics; pink, silver, white and gold diamonds danced upon their canvas. 

In the shade Irene’s skin was honeyed and her eyes almost maroon. Those drops hadn’t just been magical, they had been divine. Each one washed away unseen pain, doubt, and angst. When Seulgi pulled back, Irene’s eyes were a mute fantasy, like every fantasy she’d ever had of her. Every moment she had wished could exist beside her, inside her as one. The kiss, the look, a stolen moment that could have just washed away but instead was set, color-fast, indelible.

“Don’t you even see what I do when I look at you?” Seulgi growled more than she purred.

Irene’s cheeks held a rosemary tinge she associated with the seaside, coarse and tough, but those latter qualities Seulgi loved all the more.

“I do,” she whispered. It was the simplest thing for her to do, with her eyes and voice. Her eyes closed, her head tilted, and Seulgi felt her lips…on her cheek. A peck as one would for a little sister. “I hesitate to call you ‘darling’ in here, let alone orchestrate another love song. Sirens can be deadly.”

“Of course. I prefer their wild instincts to the angels above, anyway. They’re contagious.” Seulgi’s hands covered skin with biting lips following. “If I were a painter, I’d sit with an easel and attempt to do you justice. I wouldn’t let it make an impression on my memory. I want to _touch_ everything.”

Fingertips like matches grazed Irene’s jaw, striking at the sensitive spot around her throat. Her breath seemed to stutter in her lungs before she let it go, choking at the tension draining from her body. Seulgi unthreaded her hand over the chemise as if it were her life’s work, staring straight into identical eyes when the loose-fitting material collapsed and pooled harmoniously at her ankles.

There was a starburst of light amongst the darkening dusk, exposing an already exposed Irene − on her knees, palms splayed on the floor, her long hair almost touching the ground. Seulgi could feel the cold and velveted fingers just crawling up her spine, squeezing her neck with all the strength she had.

Reluctance. So human. So delicious.

“Can you feel it?” Light thickened with moisture. Sweat lingered in the air. The bouquet of foliage above in the church’s stained glass, softened, verdant and freshly aromatic, was overwhelming. “The rogue touch of a monster.”

Between her sleeping breaths, before she even realized it, supper sounded finally − at eight o’clock, or something after. Seulgi needed to learn how to expect the meals to always be forty minutes late. Down she went, running down the long, dull, desolate halls and flights of stairs for the eating hall. Calling it a dining room was somewhat misleading.

It was grand, to say the least. The enormous mahogany table took up the greater part of the huge space the dim, sentimental room offered, left without a decorative liner for challenging partiers to sully its varnished sparkle with their handprints. Over the table hung an old created iron candelabra with a few fiendish candles in it consumed to stumps. Threadbare orange curtains that let warmth escape in winter as effectively as though they were not there at all cast lemony spotted rhomboids of evening light to blur her vision.

So long as Seulgi could eat by the window, it was a fine spot for the night supper. But someone was in her seat.

A woman she had come to despise for almost seventeen years. A woman who still showed no expression in greeting her. Her pressed black satin hung high around her neck and blacker sleeves rolled up just above her wrists, while a single word spit out with her red lips.

“Disgraceful.”

Seulgi smirked. “This drab old thing? It’s just what I have to bed. Irene should know; she’s torn the other one in a heated tantrum fit.”

“Curve your tongue! You will not speak of my daughter like that!”

The map of wrinkles on the woman’s face told of the most incredible journey. Her eye lines told of laughter, of warm smiles and affection. Her forehead told of worries, past and present. But mostly her mouth was the best-selling volume, so deeply ingrained, bitter and beaten and forlorn.

“She is not here, but I still treasure her letters. Would you like me to fetch one?” Scarlet moved up the gentlewoman’s brow like a battalion advancing in platoon front.

Seulgi knew just the one. The insatiable hunger of the trimmers had eaten away at the magic, but it still sat atop the mantle in the full moon of the well-established nightlight, addressed and stamped, as if ready to mail.

_“What is the use of a beautiful face if one must be shut up in her own apartment forever? How shall the drawing room be of use to the grown-up daughters who have made very fine during their periods of courtship?”_

The woman’s eyes were narrowed, rigid, cold, hard. “You imprudent, damned rascal.”

_“Today’s coat is the soft green of ears of wheat, the hue they are before developing to a deep sunshine gold. Mother would never let me wear it to Philadelphia, next Sunday, or ever in her esteemed presence; it’s imposing, she roars at me, day and night.”_

“Your abhorrent attitude will be the reason your bloodline declines in history.”

_“Sometime, (my dearest), I wish to have your velvet petticoat melting into the imposing, soft hue to the way stalks are made stronger with their intertwined fibers in the summertime.”_

“What my daughter gave you was not even a stone’s throw close to puppy love. Who could learn to have a stray?”

Seulgi rolled her eyes up to where she thought her bedroom was. “Her very smell is flooding my senses now.”

The burning grayscale stare would last only as long as it took the woman to think of the most brutally cutting thing she could to tear her down with.

“Seulgi,” she started slowly, prolonging each letter as if to depreciate them.

She smiled, heart frolicking like a school of playful porpoises as she clasped her hands on either side of the letter. “Never before has my name ever felt so wonderful, I think,” she twittered, leaning in close.

“Seulgi.” Perhaps she was once admired, courted and coiffured. Now she looked as how her empty threat sounded: pathetic. “May He have mercy on your soul for what you’ve cursed upon my Irene.”


	3. Chapter 3

Willowy and without much of a bust, Seulgi could pass for twelve, but in truth she was closer to twenty-five. With elfin features and short hair she was considered ‘cute’, but come summertime where long, cold baths were welcome and she could strip off her corset and petticoats, her muscles popped right out.

Seulgi bit her lip ever so slightly and took the smallest of steps forward into the Roman bathtub, knowing fully well that escape was simple should the need arise but instead lowered herself further into the water, just so she could taste the scent of flowers and honey.

Arabian fragrances and oatmeal soap straightened her hair, a dull brown, but the keenness of her eyes made up for whatever coloring was lacking in it. A smile flashed across her face, creating slight dimples and creases that moved her cheekbones. Even though it was gone quickly, it was still there.

Seulgi dipped her head down into the water that dappled her wet curls wild and as brown as earth, while her naked arm cradled her sore breasts closer to her ribcage. _In three minutes that horrid clock will strike midnight_ , her thoughts taunted her. She groaned and slid further into the bathwater. _That will make another week for this month._

For some reason she felt herself nod once and retreated into the blackness she’d briefly come out of to grab her hairbrush. With the bristles along her scalp and an almost romantic candlelit washroom, Seulgi allowed her entire body to collapse in serenity as trembles shook her body and a euphoric warmth blossomed like a sapling.

She lovingly gazed at her slim and cute abdomen, eyes softening with tenderness before sparking with something else. She tilted her head to the side to the edge of the tub and kissed her shoulder, lips demanding and smoldering heat deep on her muscles. She cupped her cheek that was slowly turning red as her free hand inched along the more tender spots beneath her hair, the sound of her heart beating so loudly she didn’t want to concentrate.

_I like it more and more_   
_Little by little, I’m happy that I’m me_   
_What makes me even happier_   
_Is that you’re next to me_

Seulgi honestly never knew play so innocent could be so intimate and electrifying. Her lips had moved in perfect sync, and now her hands were feeling the imperfections of her waist. She pulled herself closer, the self-love deeper, more passionate. She felt her hands at the back of her neck twirl and pull the ends of the wet curls. A smile cheekily grew on her lips as it started to tickle.

 _Happy things, good things  
_ _This world is full of them_

With her cheeks still blushing hotly, Seulgi made her fingers race up her knees, down her hips, then rendezvous on the tiniest of hills on one breast. She stifled a surprised gasp and really squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation when the heat seemed to travel through her veins, warming her in silent intensity. The water moved softly around her outstretched thighs, clutching her body in a way that was elegant but enticing.

“You wear promiscuity like a dress that has lost its grace to the night.”

Seulgi lifted her chin with a jerk, and her eyes, dark like soil in the summer, went steely. Irene helped her arms away from her chest, gracefully moving the wet, soapy cloth she had long since abandoned over her flushed cheeks, then slanted sharply at her quivering and salivating mouth. Seulgi, gaze cast to the side, could see the shape of her face like a silhouette, it being milk bottle white and giving her an extremely ethereal quality that glowed out of her near translucent skin.

Each of Irene’s shoulders curled in as she chillingly hummed a matching melody to the previous song solely for Seulgi’s mind, washing whatever she could get her hands on.

_Yesterday, today and tomorrow_   
_My diary is filled with adventures to find happiness_

A soft pink shade burned Seulgi’s lips. The harsher part of the washcloth ran straight across her breasts, swirling without mercy, then at the top of her waist, it tightened to the curves.

_I’m a little different  
I believe in the power of optimism_

Seulgi instantly missed the lovely heat that had curled inside mere moments ago and shot a glare out the corner of her eye as that passion fell dormant. Irene continued to sing softly, her calm, cold, austere fingers collecting Seulgi’s hair like there was an actual symphony playing in her head.

“I once read about the most pleasant lake our country has,” she crooned, her lips cocooned to Seulgi’s earlobe. “On a full moon night, the ripples twist and shiver to lose the summer rays.”

The droplets fell thick from her hair and stung her eyes. “You have quite the adventures in your diary,” her disinterest hissed.

“It’s the only invitation we’ll ever need to dive in,” Irene continued, softly kissing up and down Seulgi’s neck. “To swim deeply into the welcoming blackness and leave our troubles above.”

Seulgi watched her statuesque reflection shimmer between awe and bewilderment, drilled down with a sense of being completely exposed, on display. She urged herself to push away, to leave the tub, but couldn’t. What had she done to herself that was so different to whatever game Irene was deciding to play now?

The older brunette began nuzzling her neck with delicate kisses, so faint they were whispers. “You are humble,” she muttered. “But my dear, it’s perfectly easy to tease you when you’re so vulnerable like this. Like a porcelain doll on my shelves.”

“Porcelain cracks under pressure,” Seulgi reminded her coldly, arching a thick eyebrow. Each of Irene’s sinking fingers laced together with one another, holding her together − both out and soon in. “You think you’re very clever and grown-up with this fine romance.”

Irene’s smirk told her everything, and if only she could smile back, sinking into the hold. “A fine romance has quarrels and flinches, insults and thrills. Soon my mother will know of the deadly sin you’ve committed in this bedroom. When she will know”—She softly kissed the tender area at the base of Seulgi’s neck, teeth placidly replacing tongue—“from dusk to dawn, that is up to you, my sweet.”

Seulgi swallowed, each of her own fingers swiftly popping the cooling bathwater. The surface haloed by ever-growing rings, distorting her toes, and it took her a full three seconds to realize her eyes had shut again when in the darkness she saw light exploding. Her lips chapped and her bones ached as Irene gently bent her head backwards to stare at her tear stained face. Soft and slow Seulgi tasted the metallic tang of blood and sadistic taste of November − hot chocolate on storm flooded evenings and crisp leaves up in flames in the autumn air.

“My dear? My sweet? All those years ago…”

Seulgi didn’t care to finish her sentence and didn’t care for the new shade of lipstick. All she could focus on was the liquid warmth abruptly surging through her body.

“I know. I still ‘hesitate to call you darling in here, let alone orchestrate another love song’. Sirens are still very deadly, dangerous vixens.”

All she could focus on was Irene, on her lips full, open-mouthed, almost sexual inside her ear; on the sensual appetite, the strong and raw cravings.

“But all those years ago…”

Irene silenced her with a kiss Seulgi could only describe as formal and mechanical. “Time gives a girl to think of her pleasurable, wild instincts,” she whispered.

Even moving into her personal space with just the right look of want in her eyes, Irene looked like a blinking angel. The start of a trespassing touch, firm but slow, sent something foreign spiraling through Seulgi, hitting the bull-eyes on more than her conscience. Her eyes closed fearlessly, but the closure didn’t let her see just darkness.

It was chaos and predictability. There was something about those brilliant bursts that seemed to warn her, even in the cold, as if their stray sparks passed into her blood. Bursts throughout the night took off like an unruly, charged chariot wheel, every streak baring a curve of sorts, brilliant lines with a living feel, organic in the way they grew.

Irene rested her forehead on Seulgi’s as her fingers burned with impatience. Seulgi wouldn’t let them extinguish the lust into blackness, not yet. Her breath was painful the longer she held onto defiance, like she was trying to breathe through a plastic bag. Her muscles strained and the unaccompanied thoughts in her head turned from fear to a dizzy confusion.

By slow, torturous degrees, she quietly murmured Irene’s name more than a few times, disgusted under the idea that she had gone through thousands of midnights under turning galaxies with her, and on this particular night − three minutes to the bewitching hour − Seulgi hardly had a moment to react to her opening mouth preparing to belt out the loudest scream she could muster.

Her face was soaked in a cold sweat, the heat already having run to her core to shelter and hoard the warmth that remained, yet her blood was just about frozen in her veins. Her skin was rough with goosebumps, pointless as they were, and her fingers fumbled on the icy condensation before regaining their grip on the rim of the Roman bathtub moments later.

A white beam beam of light told Seulgi’s one cracked and sleep-blurred eye that dawn had come.

A chill razored down her throat, thundering into an ill cough that made an involuntary tremble consume her head for a whole two minutes. She drew tiny gasps through her parted lips, having to calm herself by letting her pinky hover along the edge of the candlestick to the wick, still as perfectly smooth as the night before. The warmth it offered her was so minuscule and pathetic she found it adorable to keep watching. The struggling flame was soon sheltered by her cupped fingers, flicking in that vulnerable way fire did, then cleanly snapped out.

Seulgi was never going to receive heat from that ever again.


	4. Chapter 4

The evening held a ceremony of sorts; a special kind of black tranquility married to a poetry of stars. A darkness that wanted only to hold the stars and help them shine brighter. It was a warm black that hugged Seulgi no matter what, and within its heavenward velvet drapes, she could feel her own soul all the more clearly.

That innocent, inborn _spark_.

The road was midnight under cloud, yet beyond was the freely flowing dawn. Even though her eyes could only see one step at a time, Seulgi walked on. She knew when the night passed and stopped holding her so close until she was ready, she would be like a child, giggling at the imagined monsters that once kept her in such fear.

In the shadows she was as the flora of nature, alive and unseeing, existing only as herself. Yet as the air released the heat of the day, the stars moaned into twisted, warped shapes in the sky and the moon bared its fangs. The light was blinding, and Seulgi dumbly groped around for the stairs of the manor and collapsed in her bedroom after what felt like an eternity.

It was not yet daybreak, but she had grown used to mistaking the warm, orange glow of an oil lamp outside her window for the sun. Its light filtered in through the gaps in the curtains as Irene drew closer and took advantage of the devil’s hour.

There was a faint curve to the lips as Seulgi slipped out of the long and loose slippers and stopped by her bed. She shed the silk-like materials of the ankle length robe and flowed as lightly as an acrobat across the room, a puff of wind sweeping through her dark hair.

But her window showed a blackness she couldn’t recall ever seeing before − one that was almost absolute. It was as if invisible holes were being poked in her skin, one by one, and all her tension was being leached out. Her steps were dangerously lighter in her dreams as she slid the curtains open and came face to face with her reflection. Her eyes roamed critically from one feature to another, eyelids drooped and a slight loll to her head, drunk with confusion.

The edges of the image were a little ruffled, and her cheeks were beginning to hollow out into a bluish hue. Seulgi gave a start but could not move. Her feet barely skimmed the carpeted floor and altogether her limbs bore the appearance of being too heavy for her, like she was personally struggling against far more gravity than anyone else.

And there Irene sat, in midair, waiting in the dark of the abandoned morning wrapped in furs. She bore the expression of one expecting a great gift. There was a hint of triumph in that stiff-cheeked smile; not the supple grin of a friend or the sensual beams of a lover, but the joy after stepping over enemy _ashes_.

Seulgi had tilted her face in sleep toward the brilliant shafts breaking through the canopies outside her window. Above were the season-colored leaves, yet below the hot blankets she wore a nightdress that spoke of the coldest of winter days.

“I want to go to New York.”

The fitfully sunny morning would either see the dawn of her new life or snap her patience in two. Seulgi held her breath behind pursed lips to steady herself. The eggshell white sheets of a silk dress hung on Irene’s shoulders like pastry draped over cut apples. She sat on the embroidered rug in the underwater light of the bedroom, hands folded in her lap sedately as if waiting for the train.

Seulgi found it pathetic and rolled her eyes. “Why would you want to go there?”

“I want to celebrate with the people. I want to laugh and live amongst them again.”

“You want to celebrate a tradition you’re not even welcome to? _Tsk_ , the Fourth of July, now really.”

A riotous holiday, a noisy day in the streets. That year’s scheduled entertainment for New York City rumored to call for sporting events, music halls, and popular theatre at inexpensive prices.

“Yes, I want to go to New York…with you.”

If there was sincerity in those words, Seulgi couldn’t detect them. She spit from her lips, “You are a sorry, insensitive fool,” and silently leaned forward, daring Irene to apologize with her eyes. That was when she spotted them − purple welts on the back of her leg uncovered by the fix of her over-washed cotton frock.

“You…really are a fool,” Seulgi murmured, closing her eyes and resting on her back. She had no energy to sympathize. “New York, you say? You wrote to me all those times ago of traveling someplace more exotic. What happened to Venice, or Moscow?”

Irene rose with purpose to lock the bedroom door. _No one is getting in unless I let them_ , was what that single, soft click told Seulgi.

“It’s unbelievably crowded this time of year, and you want to take advantage of that to blend in, don’t you? In hopes that no one recognizes those bones?”

Seulgi kept her eyes closed. One false move and Irene would see them flashing in unrestrained delight. Irene’s chalky pink lips felt almost blue with cold when she kissed her.

“There would be another companion on our trip to the city, Irene. My overwhelming popularity.”

Seulgi saw the number of strong dominant features surface from the neat, smooth, perfect Korean skin. Pained patience dimpled Irene’s cheeks in a way Seulgi found both cute and concerning. A plan was hatching, a beautiful plan.

And Seulgi would find it funny, right?

Irene would bite the edge of a smile when she got another funny idea in her head, a vain attempt to keep her creeping grin at bay, but the intentions behind her perking lips wasn’t something that could easily be tamed. The urge to push her away overrode Seulgi’s nagging doubts, and a sharp pain made her mind open wider.

Irene breathed heavily down her neck, kissing with the promise of realness, of the primal desire that lived in all. She lifted her leg covered in those rich violet veins and welts and made Seulgi feel around them, her hands strong yet at the same time gentle.

“I didn’t do that,” Seulgi teased.

“Yes, you did,” Irene snapped.

Seulgi’s hands wrapped further around the brunette’s waist while Irene’s fingers locked around her neck, pulling her up slightly. In the watery sunlight their lips fitted perfectly, moving against each other in a sweltering heat and glittering like a white flame. Irene grabbed the back of Seulgi’s neck a second time, the side of her thigh stabbed against hers as Seulgi was left behind to suffocate.

She breathed deep through her nose. _In_. _Out_. Irene wouldn’t hurt her in her own manor. _In_. _Out_.

It was Irene who had surrendered completely. _In_. _Out_. Seulgi had wanted it for so long. She had sat at the edge for far too long. _In_. _Out_. They were both caught up in the moment, like they never left each other.

Irene shaved part of her nail in the back of Seulgi’s skin and let the crimson result drop down in her eyes and in her nose. _Blood, red, hot_. Within a split second Seulgi was there again. She had a choice to forget, but time never did. She could sense everything. _Electricity_. But did Irene? _She’s in denial._ What did she regret? What did she recall?

What did she say?

“I’ve always hated this damn nightdress,” Irene hissed down at her.

“An angel in a cheap dress is worth more than all the _haute couture_ demons of hell,” Seulgi whispered up.


End file.
